Australia captain Ricky Ponting is disappointed at the low price he attracted at the Indian Premier League players' auction, which saw him being sold for much less than the likes of compatriots Cameron White and David Hussey.
Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata team bought Ponting for US $400,000, which is US $300,000 and US $100,000 less than Hussey and White, who are not even regular members of the Australian team.
"I thought I might have been able to attract a little bit more than that," Ponting said in his first reaction after Wednesday's high-profile auction.
"The fact I haven't made a lot of runs over the last couple of weeks probably hasn't helped much. But realistically, we, as Australian players, probably won't be able to take part in the first couple of years of the event anyway."
He however, said there would be no friction in the dressing room following the bidding.
"I'll have a bit of a laugh and joke with everybody. I've already sent Symmo (Andrew Symonds) a few messages saying that any time I go out with him from now on it's his shout, which is not always the case with Symmo either; he's pretty much the first one to dodge a shout whenever he can," he told Australian Associated Press.
Symonds is the second highest earning player in the IPL after Mahendra Singh Dhoni and commanded a bid price of US $1.35 million from the Hyderabad team.
Ponting's Sri Lankan counterpart Mahela Jayawardene was delighted that there were "a few happy faces" after the auction, and was looking forward to work again with former coach Tom Moody.
"It's good that it's over now and we can concentrate [although] we were never that much focused on IPL. This is the start of a good event and it will probably be very successful.
"All the guys are very keen, it'll be great," said Jayawardene, who was bought by the Preity Zinta-owned Mohali for US $475,000.
"I had a chat with Tom (Moody) last night. It was a good chat we had and he just sent a text saying 'welcome back'. Both Kumar Sangakkara and myself, it will be good to work with him again."
